Anais Nin wrote that we do not see things as they are, but as we are.

This seems very true to me, and it is something I have been thinking about for a long time, especially as the political and cultural divisions all around me continue to sharpen, deepen and grow.

I keep waiting for us to find common ground with one another, to  revert to some common ground, but instead, we seem to be being pushed apart a bit farther every day, we do not have leaders seeking to unite us.

This time has been a gift to me, as much as it causes suffering to others, it has challenged me to go deeper and inward into myself, to find ways to do good and feel good, to be part of an Army of Good, which is a thrilling turn in my life, and a welcome one.

But I am also working hard to practice true empathy, the highest calling of humanity, the ability to put myself in the shoes of another, and it is both difficult and compelling. My political views and sensibilities have not changed in the past year, they have only been sharpened, and that is true for almost everyone else as well. I believe I have managed to avoid the anger and outrage that fill the air around me.

Yet I do want to know and feel and see what it is that drives others to great passion and anger and feeling, and to see the world so differently than I do. I won’t do what so many people have done to me, and labeled me quickly so that they can ignore me.

It isn’t enough to simply declare myself virtuous and compassionate and superior. Why do other people see immigrants and refugees in such different ways? Why do they seem to heartless when it comes to the poor and the suffering to me? Why do the seem so cold and angry, so selfish and closed? Why do the persecute gay and  transgender people so relentlessly, and how do people who claim to love Jesus ignore his every teaching and hate the poor?  Why are hypocrites the lowest form of life for me?

I look at a video  of a frightening demonstration and see one thing, millions of people look at it and see another. I am shocked by a pardon of a renegade law enforcement official who defied a federal judge, yet so many other people see him as hero and cheer his escape from justice.

Am I all good and they all bad? I don’t think so.

It is true what Nin wrote, we do not see things as they are, but as we are, and that is the problem, of course.We confuse our own perceptions with absolute reality. Jesus and the Dalai Lama can get away with that, they are holy figures, Jon Katz cannot.

We have forgotten how to speak with one another and meet in the middle, we all seem to be moving to the edges, farther and farther apart from one another. I keep thinking we have fought this war before, and more than once, but then I  realize this is a war that is never over, and will always have to be fought, that is the nature of human beings. The rich always screw the poor, the dispossessed always find someone to blame.

Until we finally find a way to destroy the planet once and for all, we will find new ways to argue and hate and fight with one another. This ought to be dispiriting to me, but it is not. It is yet another door to open, not a gate to shut. The world is a mess. The world has always been a mess. The world is a glorious place.

Every morning, I look at the news, and I take the position of the other side. What do they see that I don’t see? What do they feel that I don’t feel? I put aside my anger and bias insofar as I can. How can I see things that are, not that I am?  This has not changed my basic beliefs, but it has softened them.

I do not have a gloomy view of the world, quite the opposite. There is so much love and light and beauty on the earth, and so much suffering and darkness. One goes hand in hand with the other.

A good friend of mine was attacked and beaten in Charlottesville she was knocked to the ground and injured, and several members of a militia, carrying big machine guns,  rushed to help her, give her first aid, and save her from further harm. These were people she was prepared to hate, but they turned out to be angels who hovered over her. They saved her life.

She is looking at the world in a softer way now.

Moving out of a rich, educated and smug community in New Jersey, it was helpful for me to come here, to a small, unpretentious, struggling and truly diverse community of very real people.  Here, farmers and artists live and work side by side, we talk to each other all the time, we know one another even if we don’t always like or love one another.

This is not a place for snobs or elitists, there is no comfort for them, it is not a place to be smug.

Living in a rural community, I have long felt the isolation and anger and abandonment of the people who live here, engulfed in suicides, unemployment, fleeing jobs, remote and arrogant politicians,  drug use, hopelessness and despair.  There is great suffering here, and it was, I know, a lit fuse waiting to ignite something furious and explosive all across the country. And that has happened, we we all bear responsibility for it.

There is so much desperation here, I did not see it or feel it or know it until I moved here more than a decade ago. I see this anger and disconnection all the time at rallies, in interviews, from my neighbors. They have joined their own revolution.

Empathy is the way back for me, if I can see what others see, then they might be able to see what I see. I don’t wish to be a soldier on the left or the right, I like being an organizer in the Army Of Good, that is how I began the year, that is how I will finish it.

I expect that I will always be me, I’m not looking to be someone else. But I can’t only comprehend the world through my own prism. That isn’t working for anyone.

A friend came up to me on the street yesterday and began raging about the people who don’t wish to take all of the statues down, the latest political hysteria in the country. He said they were bigots and separatists and fascists. I don’t want to be doing that or enabling that. If the statues upset and offend people – and some of them upset and offend me – then they should of course come down, and go somewhere else. They ought not to sit in the middle of town commons and courts.

I would not wish to explain to an African-American child, or to my granddaughter why a huge statue of a general who fought for slavery and the destruction of our country should tower over her every day, literally on a pedestal.

Yet it is not so simple, as nothing really is.

Many people I know who are not racists or Nazi’s do feel their history and identity is being torn from them without much thought or consideration, along with almost everything else they have known or loved.  They feel discarded and libeled. I spent some hard time this week trying to stand in their shoes, and I see it all differently, my mind has not changed about the statue, but I see it in a softer way. This is a conversation we ought to be having.

It is wrong to me to label everyone who sees the world differently than me as a moron, bigot or thug. I will never get to see the world as it is that way, and it seems to me that is the great moral and ethical challenge facing me. How to find my moral ground without taking it away from everyone who sees the world differently that me. That feels arrogant to me.

Condemnation and argument accomplish nothing more than more condemnation and argument, and then, violence and bloodshed.

I’m looking for a better way. It starts by recognizing that I see the world through my own prism, and I am not ever certain that I see things as they really are.

I wish to remember that before I take my daily outrage pill every morning. There are more colors than black and white in the world..